


The Stars Too

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:17:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: bros in valhalla





	The Stars Too

1

 

“Thor?” Loki called, rising up from boggy ground that squelched and gave way under his heels, ass, and elbows. “Where are we?”

 

Everything smelled wet. Mist moved through the air in dense patches, obscuring Loki’s view. When he held his hand at arm’s length, he couldn’t see past his wrist. He took a few cautious steps and sank into mud up to his ankles, then did an about-face and carefully inched forward, testing the ground with slowly increasing pressure, gently transferring his weight.

“Thor? Did you land in this mess head first and get your ears stopped with muck?”

The mist made Loki think of Niflheim, but that realm was painfully cold. This place was warm. Comfortable, apart from the lack of visibility. The air soothed his throat.

 

Loki crouched to get a better view of the ground, searching for tracks other than his own. He crawled forward with his nose nearly in the dirt, smelling wood, leaves, moss, and water. After traveling twenty feet in this manner, the earth grew dark and firm and Loki met his own reflection in a glassy pool. 

“Thor? Are you near water?” Loki called. He thought he heard a fast echo come from his right, as if his words had bounced off of something hard and close at hand.

 

He followed the water’s edge until the dirt gave way to smooth stone pavers. These turned into three low steps that ended in a threshold. The mist stopped at the staircase and he turned back to look up at it. The shifting wall of white vapor rose until it was lost among the clouds. 

 

A set of ornate gold doors rose high above Loki’s head, left and right almost the mirrors of each other. They showed two eagles perched in profile, with one shared wyrm crushed and punctured in their talons. The flaccid corpse of the serpent seemed a grotesque thing to so carefully render in gold. Its smooth, grub-like body was so glossy it shone like slime. Fat. Gorged. Almost formless. Like ground meat in a gut casing. But the longer Loki looked at it, the more sense it made. It provided the contrast necessary to set off the firm splendor of the birds. The shaft of every feather was carefully chased and engraved. Each vane overlapped the next, creating depth. Loki had initially mistaken the background for a tree, as the overall shapes were branching and the mind went there with birds. But, on closer inspection, the left door swirled with patterns like frost on a window while the right was laced with jagged lines of lightning. 

 

Loki saw no handles, knobs, or knockers. He pushed at the doors where they met in the center but they wouldn’t budge. He tried the left with all his weight and felt his feet slide back behind him as he drove his shoulder into the gold. After a minute of this, he straightened and tried knocking.

“Hello?” he called, cocking his head to listen for footsteps. But he heard nothing.

 

There were runes at the top of the doorframe, illegible from Loki’s vantage point. When he stepped backward for a better angle, the mist blocked his view. He took the shape of a hummingbird and hovered before the writing, then dropped like a stone, tumbling backward down the steps into the fog. 

 

_ Bilskirnir _ . His brother’s hall in Valhalla. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


2

 

Eddies of ash still danced along the edges of streets and sidewalks. Thor felt cruel for agitating them further with his wind. 

 

Captain Rogers’s face made Thor’s heart beat faster, but not at the usual pleasure of seeing his friend. Steven looked dead despite his movements. His face was slack and drawn. Still blue with bruises. Expressionless. An aptrgangr. He had shaved off his beard and had nicked himself in the process. The cut on his neck was still smooth and soft. Bright red at its center. It looked like it stung.

 

“Anything you care to tell me?” Steve asked. He pushed his empty plate away and folded his forearms on the table, then leaned forward and let the weight of his shoulders rest on them. “Things it might be helpful to know? Wheels I can save myself the trouble of reinventing?”

Rogers sounded more tired than angry to Thor’s ears, and at least half his anger was with himself. The rest was likely with the universe. Probably the piece of it called Thanos in particular.

“Ultimately only guesses,” Thor admitted.

“Well, that’s more than I’ve got.”

Thor nodded and took a swig of the blessedly strong coffee Steve had brewed for them. He caught his own tired reflection in its surface.

“I’ve had so little time to think,” Thor said. “And it’s never been my strong suit. But there’s no one left for me to ask, so I can only go by what’s come and gone.”

“What’s gone?”

Thor gave a tight smile.

“Loki’s words were rarely,” Thor glanced up at the ceiling, searching, “ _ straightforward _ . They were often true but seemed false because he knew something you didn't know. Or he meant them in a way he knew you’d misinterpret. Before he died… I think everything he said in his final moments was, in some way, meant for me. A pledge to tell me I could finally trust him… and then a message- a  _ lesson _ ,” Thor amended. “His last words to Thanos were ‘You will never be a god.’”

“So… Loki was warning  _ you _ you’ll never be a god?”

“No, he was reminding me that I already am.”

“Yeah, but what good is lightning against that gauntlet, Thor?” Steve sighed. “No offense. Not that it isn’t amazing-”

Thor was laughing. Steve couldn’t help a smile. Thor finally saw pink creep into his friend’s cheeks.

“Not much, I know,” Thor admitted. “Thunder wasn’t what I needed to be reminded of. My father already set me straight on that count.”

Steve gave Thor a soft, sympathetic smile. Thor couldn’t speak without dredging up loss, but he was bearing it as if it were nearly weightless, which spoke of long practice.

“My father was the god of death,” Thor said, and watched the words drain the color from Steve’s cheeks again. “And his father before him, and his before him, and on and on. I suspect he had my sister in mind for the task, but she cared only for power and killing. For herself. Like Thanos. I had to stop her. Loki’s gone. Vision’s gone. It falls to me.”

“You’re the god of death,” Steve murmured. He was looking through Thor as he said it, lost in those five syllables. Belief in the words hadn’t arrived yet. Steven only knew them abstractly.

“Yes,” Thor nodded. “Do you see the loophole?”

Steve narrowed his eyes, then widened them. He watched all the hair on his arms stand on end as thousands of goosebumps rose on his skin. 

“I think so. Loophole is a kind word for it. Millstone might be more appropriate.” 

They both laughed quietly, letting their shoulders bounce as their eyes shut with their smiles.

“I don’t plan to do much with the position,” Thor said, leaning back in his seat once they’d settled. “There’s just one large, asinine wrong I’d like to right.”

“I’d like to help you.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Thor smiled. 

  
  
  


Thor packed one day’s rations for one person and plotted the course. They put the quinjet on autopilot once they were out over the ocean. 

“Why are we going to this place in particular?” Steve asked.

“I’ve been there once before. There’s a pool in a cave. Part of the well of Urd. It runs through all the realms. I’d like you to know the way to Asgard.”

“Asgard’s gone,” Steve said gently. He was surprised to get a grin where he’d expected a grimace.

“The Realm Eternal is not a place,” Thor smiled. “It’s a people.”

“Who are also gone.” Steve winced at himself as he said it. Thor laughed.

“Then they wouldn’t be eternal,” Thor winked.

Steve took a deep breath, held it, and let it out again.

“Okay, but if you’re eternal and a god, then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is...” Thor dropped his eyes, then closed them. His upper lip was relaxed, but his lower lip and jaw had both dropped to form the first word of a sentence he was sorry to begin. “I was the god of death the last time I met Thanos and he nearly killed me. I’m vulnerable like this. He can catch me. Wound me. Cage me.”

“Is this going where I think it’s going?”

“I think so.”

Steve’s head fell back and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. Thor listened to his friend’s softly hitching breaths. Heard them stretch to full blown sobs for several minutes, then even out and deepen again.

“We get what we pay for,” Thor said gently. “I’m about to ask a lot. It’s going to cost me. I’m sorry it’s going to cost you too. I need someone on this side to make sure it gets done. You’re the only one left who’s strong enough. See the forest for the trees, Steven. Thanos can’t. There are two things he won’t willingly trade. If you pay and I pay, we can take them away from him.”

“I just… feel like this should all be on his tab,” Steve said, and set Thor laughing again.

“I suspect the Norns are on your side in that.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it.”

  
  
  
  
  


“So what do I do? “ Steve asked, watching Thor undress by the pool. He was moving as casually as one would if they were getting ready for a swim or a bath. “Do you know?”

“I do,” Thor nodded. “I’ve seen flashes of this part before. The last time I was here, in fact. Down to the shaving nick on your neck. That’s how I knew it was today. Couldn’t imagine how I ever made you mad enough to do it. Didn’t occur to me that I’d asked.”

 

Steve found it strange to hear Thor speak of it in the past tense. And heartbreaking. A fate already accepted. Almost lived. In his mind as a memory. Steve undressed too, uncertain of the etiquette of wells that ran between worlds, following the lead of the only one left who knew.

“Afterward, I’ll come back for a bit. I’ll be different, but you’ll be safe.”

“And before?” Steve asked.

“You’ll put this through my heart, hold onto me until you’re sure I’m dead, and then let me sink,” Thor said, pointing to a long knife that he’d set at the edge of the pool. He curled his fingers until the captain climbed down into the water. Steve was crying again. Holding his breath while tears streamed down his cheeks in unbroken lines. “The realms are fond of you already,” Thor said softly. He squeezed Steve’s shoulders and slid his hands up until they were curled around the back of Steve’s neck. “I know they have a funny way of showing it.” This won a wet laugh and a brisk nod from Steve. Thor pulled him close and hugged him tight. “This will win you further favor,” Thor continued. “Deeper debt. All the worlds will owe you even more. And so will I. One day I’ll come to settle my account. I hope you’ll let me.”

Steve wrapped his arms tight around Thor’s waist and squeezed. 

“I really don’t want to do this,” he said, shaking his head where it rested on Thor’s shoulder. Thor’s back tickled where tears dripped down his skin.

“Thank you,” Thor laughed, and kissed Steve’s neck, nodding. “That’s why it will work.” Thor leaned back and took Steve’s face in his hands. Kissed his forehead, nose, and mouth. Grinned and kissed them all again.

“I wish we’d had more time,” Steve said.

“So do I. I’ll do my best to make it up to you.”

 

Thor picked up the knife and set the tip at the left edge of his sternum between two ribs.

“If you angle the point toward my middle, you’ll hit your mark.”

Steve blinked back tears and nodded. 

“Are you absolutely sure about this? Haven’t you ever seen anything else?” Steve asked, half hopeful, half panicked. 

Thor’s smile was grateful and apologetic.

“This is the way it goes.”

Steve frowned and shook his head.

“But Thanos has the soul stone. He can reach you anywhere.”

“I’m not a soul, Steven,” Thor soothed. “I’m a god. There’s no stone for that.”

“Loki,” Steve whispered, and his face opened with surprise. Thor nodded.

“He’s been leading me the right way for a long time now, even without meaning to. That’s the catch of being a trickster god: you’re forever the victim of your own influence. Nothing he attempted for himself ever worked out. But he always roped me into setting things straight.”

“He wouldn’t want this.” 

“No, I don’t think he would,” Thor agreed. His face was warm and his voice fond. “But I can hear him calling me anyway. That only happens when it’s close. He’s lost himself again somewhere. I’d like to find him. I’m sick to death of missing him.” 

Steve’s face cleared and smoothed.

“I know the feeling.”

“I know you do,” Thor said, linking his fingers behind Steve’s neck to brace himself, “so send me home.”

 

Steve held Thor’s gaze and Thor gave a small nod. There was still more resistance than Steve was hoping for, but the blade went in to the hilt. Thor’s fingers slipped from Steve’s neck and his hands spilled down over Steve’s shoulders. Steve caught him behind the head and around the waist and gently lowered him, letting the water bear him up.

“Are you all right?” Steve asked, then choked a laugh and sobbed because the answer in these circumstances should only have been no, and the question entirely unnecessary. But everything was relative to such a degree that Thor was nodding and smiling at him while the water went bright red. 

 

Thor’s eyes closed first, which was the hardest part. The end at the beginning. Steve wasn’t ready for it. Thor’s breathing slowed until it became regular and mechanical. Only his diaphragm was still moving. Steve heard soft clicks as the muscle failed and the air caught in Thor’s throat. When those sounds ceased, he watched the fluttering pulse in Thor’s neck flatten and still. Steve kissed his friend goodbye and let him go.

  
  
  
  


The captain was still dressing when the surface of the pool began to move. Ripples at first, then a round shape rising, followed rapidly by a set of shoulders he’d know anywhere. There was something like a skin over him, as red as the cape he had worn, but liquid now, catching the light in long, bright lines. His eyes were a cool, glowing white, sending out tiny bolts of lightning after every blink. Steve could hear the soft crackle of electricity echoing off the walls of the cave. The god of death was made of blood and thunder and wore a gold gauntlet on his left hand.

Steve smiled.

When Thor said  _ Thank you Steven,  _ his voice was quiet and breathless, full of wet pops and a soft hiss.

“You’re welcome.”

 

Steve saw Thor’s fingers curl. Saw the flaws in the glove mend themselves. He heard footsteps and quiet cursing behind him just before Bucky stepped in front of him, making a wall of himself to ward off the ally he didn’t recognize.

“It’s all right, Buck, that’s just Thor.”

“ _ Jesus Christ _ .”

“Just about.” 

 

Thor put his hands over his heart and bowed low to Steve, then turned and went back into the water. Steve stepped closer and found the pool as clear as it had been when they had first come. No lovely body lying at the bottom of it.

  
  
  


Steve asked for details later. He learned that there had been a sound like the crunching of bones just as Thanos’s head had tipped over at an impossible angle. Thanos had swiftly dropped to his knees, at which point his head had imploded, though no one could tell how. Then he had fallen, face first, to the ground. From the gore that had pooled around him, a red figure had risen up, burned Thanos to ash with a bolt of lightning, grabbed the gauntlet, and stepped back down into the blood.

  
  
  
  
  


3

 

Loki was still lying in a heap at the pool’s edge when he heard footsteps and a splash that startled him afresh. Something had been flung into the water behind him. He went still and waited. Heard dripping and receding footfalls. He crawled toward the probable source of the sound until he came to a path. The prints in the dirt were large enough that he could lay his whole forearm within them, his elbow at the heel and his hand in the divot left by the big toe. He scrambled back to the doors of Bilskirnir and followed them to their edge, then crept around the frame, hoping to find a low wall or a window he could climb through. Instead he found a void. Only space and distant stars lay behind the golden doors.

 

Loki walked back to the steps on weak legs and sat down shaking. The cruelty of the joke that awaited his brother was unconscionable. After all Thor had done. To have come so far only to be met with a monument to past failures. To youthful boasts and bluster. To the ghost of the man he used to be. Loki knew Thor was still cocky, but now it stemmed from a sense of humor and an awareness not only of his past, but of his trajectory. It didn’t add up. Thor’s missteps couldn’t be enough to undermine his generosity, kindness, and capacity for empathy. Thor’s internal compass had grown so true. It was no longer overconfident of him to trust it. It was wise.

  
  


Hours passed and footsteps came again. Loki crept silently to the path’s edge and waited. He nearly took a kick to the teeth, but pulled his head back in time to catch only breeze. He saw long skirts and, beneath them, blue skin with raised markings. He heard another splash and more dripping, then watched the feet pass by again. 

 

If there was any realm unlikely to forgive Thor, it was Jotunheim. Perhaps Laufey had found a way to bar the brothers from Valhalla. Robbed them of their eternity, or condemned them to one of mist and repetition.

 

After a few cycles, Loki learned to distinguish the footsteps. Like signatures or voices. Three gaits. One slow and shuffling. One firm and even, overtaking the first. One light and quick, forever lapping the other two. 

 

He stretched out on the soggy peat where he’d first found himself and let the rhythms of the footsteps lull him to sleep. 

  
  
  


Loki woke to water spilling over his cheeks. He opened his eyes only to shut them tight against the searing brightness of the sun. He sat up and shaded his face with his fingers while he waited for his vision to adjust. He was hit with another jet of water before he could properly see. When the white of the sky had finally dimmed to its proper blue, Loki saw his brother standing waist deep in the pool, spitting water at him in a high arc so that it drilled straight down onto the top of his head. 

 

Loki felt panic coursing through him until he saw the gauntlet on Thor’s hand.

“Just visiting then,” Loki said, and the tension slowly left him. 

“What?”

“The stones.”

“She’ll be along for them in a moment,” Thor said, looking back over his shoulder down the path that led to the tree. A tall figure was slowly moving toward them, but slow at such a scale was still quick. A short step for the approaching woman was longer than Loki’s stride when running.

“Urðr,” Thor said, climbing from the pool and bowing low, then going up on the tips of his toes to offer the gauntlet. 

 

Loki saw the backs of his brother’s calves bunch up and the curves of his behind lift as he reached high above his head for her fingers.

 

Urðr took the thing and wrung it in her hands like dough, rolling it into a rope, then curving it into a torque to wear around her neck. She bent to the well to fill her bucket with water, then turned and went back to feed the tree.

 

“Shouldn’t that have gone to Skuld?” Loki asked, when Urðr had left. “To shape the coming days?”

“She does well enough without it,” Thor said. “I want it firmly in the past.”

Loki nodded and watched Thor splash his way across the pool again rather than walking the little distance around it. The ripples set the surface shimmering, bouncing light across Thor’s skin in flickering waves.

“In the promised sun,” Loki smiled, as Thor reached down and pulled him to his feet.

“It was a fog bank when I first got here,” Thor said, flicking away the droplets of water that were still caught in Loki’s curls.  Loki looked all around for wisps of mist, but found grassy hills, tall trees, and sunlight in their stead. 

“How will you get home without the stones?” Loki asked. “Can you swim back through the well?”

“I am home.”

“ _ Visiting _ ,” Loki amended, and grimaced. “I’m afraid there isn’t much here for you at the moment. There’s a nasty joke behind those doors,” Loki tossed his head to his right, at the gold square framed by stars, “and a nasty little brother here in front of them. You should get back to Midgard. See if you can find a way to stay there until the Norns have forgiven you.”

“Loki, I’m not leaving,” Thor said slowly, watching his brother’s eyes. He saw them widen, flood, and then well over. Tears zig-zagged down his cheeks as he shook his head  _ no _ . 

“But you’re the god of death,” Loki bawled. “Just give yourself life again.”

“It’s a cage.”

“It’s  _ life _ .”

“It’s a body. It was a liability,” Thor said. “And it was always a finite thing. Just a question of degree.”

“Who did it?” Loki choked, grabbing Thor’s shoulders and shaking them. “I’ll find a way to-”

“I did, ultimately,” Thor said. He meant it to be soothing, but Loki gaped liked he’d been slapped. He moved his mouth twice, trying to shape his lips into words only to have them wrenched wide by sobs.

“Why?” Loki said finally, sinking to his knees and sitting on his heels, slowly tipping onto his side and rolling away to lie in the muck that still bore divots from where his feet had pushed through it days before.

Thor sighed and curled up behind his brother, drawing butterfly wings onto the bare skin of his back while he waited for the latest cloud to pass. 

“All of Valhalla at your feet and you find the wallow,” Thor said, puffing a tiny gust of laughter out against Loki’s nape. 

 

Loki tipped onto his back and dried his cheeks with his fingers. He took a deep breath, looked at Thor, then squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head again, curling toward his brother for another round of tears.

“Why?” Loki asked again.

“It was the only path I could see. And three birds with one stone is hard to beat.”

“What were the three?”

“Killing Thanos, fixing what he broke, and coming home.”

“He’s dead?”

“Very.”

“Good,” Loki said. He sniffled and sat up. “What did you do?”

“Broke his neck and crushed his head, then burned his body.”

“He deserved worse,” Loki said, squinting as he pictured a thousand bad deaths. “Something slow.”

“I know, but I was in a hurry to finish the rest of it.”

Loki hummed and nodded. Thor rose to his feet.

“Come on. You’re caked in mud. Let’s get you cleaned up.” 

 

Loki allowed himself to be manhandled into the water. He stood, lost behind his eyes, obeying the urging of Thor’s fingers when they nudged him this way and that for a scrubbing, holding still when they scooped clumps of dirt from the shell of his ear.

“What did you mean by  _ ‘ultimately _ ,’” Loki asked, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes at his brother.

“It was my idea,” Thor said. “My  _ request _ .”

“What?” Loki breathed, grabbing Thor by the earlobes.

“I knew he could do it. Knew he was worthy. But I needed to be sure the realms knew it too. Needed to be sure the Norns would know him.  _ Owe _ him. Grant him luck as good as mine.”

“The captain,” Loki said. Thor gave him a tight nod. “What did you put him through?”

Thor parted his lips, then thought the better of it. He pried his brother’s left wrist away from his ear and set Loki’s palm to his forehead.

 

Loki saw what Thor saw. Blue eyes framed red with weeping. Sobs reined in by held breath. Lips gone white where they were caught between clenched teeth. His own dying face reflected in two pupils that were wide with fright and with the low light of the electric lanterns. 

 

“That poor boy,” Loki gasped, stumbling backward, splashing as he fell down to sit in the shallow water. 

“I know.”

“He’s better than us.”

“By far,” Thor agreed.

“Did you win him a place here? And that pretty friend of his with the dog’s name?”

“Bucky. Yes, I think so. And, if not, I can do as I please behind those doors. I’ll sneak them in that way. Being the god of death has to count for something.”

“Those doors don’t open,” Loki said. “Which is just as well, since there’s nothing behind them. I did try to warn you.”

Thor grabbed Loki’s arm and hauled him up again.

“What about you?” Thor asked, leading Loki up the stairs as the water streamed from their skin and made a soothing patter against the stone pavers. 

“What about me?”

“How many gods of mischief did you scatter across the realms.”

“Only eighty.  _ Ish _ ,” Loki answered. “Though with all the species and lifespans I can’t say for certain how many are left.”

Thor clapped his brother on the back and shoved the doors. They held their ground. Loki spread his hands and looked to the sky, silently begging for patience and sympathy.

“By the nine, brother, I swear it’s in one ear and out the other with you. My voice is a dozen times deeper than it should be from the wear of all the words I’ve wasted on your thick skull for the last fifteen hundred years...”

 

While Loki continued his litany of the ways Thor had wronged him, Thor smiled and nodded and set his brother’s hands on the left door. Thor placed his own palms on the right one. Unable to find space to fit a word in so that he could ask Loki to push, Thor put his left leg out to the side and pressed his foot in against the back of his brother’s right knee. 

 

Loki’s weight pitched forward as he fell. When he tried to brace himself against the door, it gave way before him and sent him sprawling onto a dark wooden floor.

“What the bloody hell?” Loki gasped, turning onto his side and glaring up at his brother. 

“Ta-da,” Thor said, spinning in a circle with his arms outstretched before bending to help Loki up yet again.

 

Overall, the place was modest. Not the palace suggested by the doors. No gold or polished stone. It reminded Loki of a tavern he and his brother had frequented for centuries and the rooms it let upstairs.  

“What is this?”

“Ours,” Thor said, wrinkling his nose as if the answer was obvious. “You can alter whatever you wish. Just leave the bed alone if I’m in it. It’s been so long since I slept in one that was really meant for me.”

 

Loki did a slow loop of the main room, circling its couches and dining table, feeling the cool bricks of the hearth beneath his feet, peering into doorways to find a bedroom, a bath, a library bigger than all the other rooms combined, a kitchen, and a larder with steps that led down to a wine cellar. 

 

Thor was stretched out on his back in bed with his eyes closed when Loki came in. Loki stood by the foot of the mattress, staring at the spot on his brother’s breast where there should have been a fresh wound and at the many spots on his sides that should have borne old scars. He nearly found it funny that two of the men Thor most loved, and who most loved him, had put knives in him. He couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh about it. He wondered if Heimdall had a greater claim to his brother’s heart for never having wounded it. But no. If life were fair like that, Thor wouldn’t be here yet.

 

“Not tired?” Thor asked.   
“I think I’ve been asleep for a few days,” Loki admitted, climbing into the bed anyway and rolling toward his brother. “Though I wouldn’t characterize myself as energetic. More disoriented.”

Thor nodded and turned to run the pads of his fingers over Loki’s neck and throat before leaning over and pressing his face under Loki’s jaw, kissing all the places his fingertips had been, breathing in the familiar scents of hair and skin.

“Is this what you expected?” Loki whispered. Thor kissed his way up over Loki’s jaw and onto his cheek before he answered.

“Yes and no. We’re together. That much I expected. But I wasn’t prepared to remember so much. To  _ feel _ it,” Thor corrected. “To be in mourning. And I didn’t want you here so soon. Didn’t want Mother and Father and all of our friends…” Thor shook his head. “I know they’re all safe now. But I haven’t shaken off the grief for all they lost and suffered.”

“Exactly,” Loki murmured. “I thought we’d just dodged Ragnarok. Instead we were heading straight into it.” 

“It’s a lot to digest.”

“Too much.”

“I’m hoping to let it sink in while I sleep.”

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” Loki nodded, turning around and scooting backward until Thor spooned up behind him and looped a heavy arm around his waist.

  
  
  
  


Loki woke to the bed dipping in front of him and long fingers threading through his curls. He stiffened, shocked at being caught so quickly.

“How did you open the doors?” Loki asked.

“I didn’t have to,” Frigga said, and tapped his nose. “No one closed them.”

“Ah,” Loki nodded, wincing at himself for forgetting.

“Heimdall told me you were here.”

“Of course he did,” Loki sighed. “And Father?”

“He’s on his way. I walk faster than he does and today I wasn’t willing to wait.” 

“That’s because your legs are twice as long as his. I’m amazed you didn’t stick him on stilts ages ago just so he could keep up.”

“Then I’d never get any peace.” They giggled together and she smoothed his hair away so that she could trace his ear. “Are you all right?”

“Ultimately,” Loki nodded.   
“And what does that mean?”

“We weren’t expecting the grief.”

“If you lost that, you’d lose joy with it.”

 

Thor yawned and stretched. Kissed the back of Loki’s head and pulled him in tighter.

“Did you bring a woman into our bed?” Thor asked, catching Frigga’s perfume in the air. 

Loki’s eyes incrementally widened at the kiss, the embrace, the  _ woman _ and the  _ our _ .

“ _ Thor _ ,” Loki gritted.

Thor peeked up over Loki’s shoulder, kissing it on his way, and winked at their mother.

“Oh. I see your time on Sakaar got rid of  _ all _ your inhibitions. Very adventurous, brother,” Thor approved, jostling Loki with his arm and feeling Loki go rigid, then limp at the sound of their mother’s laughter.

“You’re both rotten,” Loki scolded.

“And you’re as pure as the driven snow,” Thor and Frigga said in unison.

 

Odin found all three asleep when he arrived, with Loki nestled snugly between his two great loves. He left them as they were and went to help himself to the contents of the larder before going outside to begin a bit of gardening that Thor would finish for him later.

  
  
  


Frigga was rising from the bed when Loki woke again. She saw him reach to move Thor’s arm and she bent to stop his hand.

“Stay with him. I’ll show myself out,” she said softly. “And I’ll shut the doors behind me.”

Loki pursed his lips and pretended to glare at her. She stroked his cheek and fixed the sheets, pulling them up over his shoulder.

“Is he all right?” Loki breathed. She looked behind him to where Thor was sleeping.

“Better than all right on the whole,” she said, tipping her head.

“But,” Loki guessed. 

“But he couldn’t save you. That’s a wound that will never leave him.” She watched Loki’s face break. She pinched his ear to pull him out of himself. “He won’t let on, of course. You know how he is. So you’ll just have to remember it’s there.”

Loki nodded and she bent to kiss his brow before she disappeared through the door.

  
  


Thor slept for two more days and then woke slowly. Loki watched him shift, rolling from his side to his back. Putting one knee up and drifting off again so that it sagged, half waking him as it fell. He righted it, resumed his doze, and the leg drooped all over again, pulling him from sleep. It happened half a dozen times. Thor woke fully when Loki couldn’t stop laughing at him. 

“What’s so funny?” Thor yawned. “Have I been farting in my sleep?”

“No, just startling yourself awake.”

“You do,” Thor smiled.

“Startle myself?”

“No, fart in your sleep. A few minutes after you’ve fully gone under. And then you make this little moan. It’s the most satisfied sound I’ve ever heard.”

Thor imitated it. A low, sighed  _ ahn _ .  

“Stop speaking,” Loki said, stuffing a pillow over his brother’s face.

“Usually the best course of action in my case,” came Thor’s muffled admission. Loki pulled the pillow away again and Thor’s eyes went to his throat. His fingers followed.

“There’s more to me than neck, you know,” Loki reminded, sliding the inside of his leg up the front of Thor’s thigh.

“This mouth, for starters,” Thor said, catching Loki’s lips between the edges of his fingers, like paper in scissors, holding them still.

They giggled and shoved each other.

“Are there nights here?” Thor asked.

“Yes, you’ve slept through three so far.”

“Have you been awake all this time?”

“No, just off and on.”

 

Thor nodded and burrowed under Loki’s jaw again, mouthing his neck and covering it with soft, lingering kisses.

“The rest of me,” Loki reminded, when Thor had made three passes around his throat.

Thor hummed and rolled Loki onto his back, then stretched out on top of him and pinned Loki’s arms above his head. He swirled his beard through Loki’s armpits and skated his whiskers across Loki’s nipples, sometimes licking them with weightless flicks of his tongue, making his brother squeal and thrash until he’d gone breathless.

 

The lower Thor went, the more difficult it became to restrain Loki’s hands. Loki finally wrenched them free when Thor reached the bottom of his ribs, but he only ran his fingers through Thor’s messy blond hair, fluffing it up where the pillows had flattened it, brushing it the wrong way and feeling the short strands tickle his palms. Thor kissed Loki’s belly, feeling it flex when he mouthed the tender spots where the flanks began. When Loki’s cock nudged Thor’s jaw, he dragged his beard up one side and down the other. Loki shrieked and sat up, smacking Thor’s head with open hands, laughing  _ Oh, you shit, you shit, you absolute shit. I should have seen that coming. _

“Sorry,” Thor said, his crooked grin shattering any semblance of sincerity. 

 

To properly apologize, Thor licked the path his beard had taken. Loki dropped down against the pillows again with his head thrown back. His fingers gently combed through Thor’s hair, soothing all the places he had slapped. Thor kept licking up one side and down the other, pivoting his head above Loki’s hips until all of Loki’s cock was slick and soothed and shining. 

 

Thor looked up and saw the arch in his brother’s back, aiming the head of his cock down so that it pointed toward Thor’s lips. He saw the quick, deep breaths he had first thought they were finished drawing. He’d imagined his existence in Valhalla as that of a sated sort of ghost. But now he saw how that would have been a punishment. There was no joy in having if you’d wholly ceased to want. No paradise in stasis.

 

Loki made a quiet cry when Thor swallowed his cock. If his mouth hadn’t been full, Thor would have told his brother it was the same sound he made when he farted in his sleep. But the sounds Loki made at the end, as he bucked and spilled down Thor’s throat, were something entirely new to Thor’s ears. Louder than he was expecting from someone who’d always been so secretive. Sharp sobs with every pulse of seed, fading into airy gasps.

 

Thor sat back on Loki’s thighs and kneaded his brother’s hips, circling the joints with the heels of his palms until Loki started snoring. Then Thor carefully climbed off and tiptoed to the larder.

 

“Are you eating without me?” Loki called a short time later, already knowing the answer, accusation sharpening his voice.

“Yes,” Thor replied, a mouthful of buttered bread smothering the word.

 

Thor heard footsteps behind him and then the ringing of porcelain against the wooden tabletop as Loki set down a wide bowl of grapes. He took a seat beside Thor and began rhythmically picking the fruit from the stems, popping it into his mouth at clockwork intervals until it had disappeared.

  
  


Thor went back to bed with the request that Loki wake him for sunset. Loki meant to read in the meantime, but his gaze kept drifting out the windows to the meadows, lakes, and mountains that had been a void just days before. The world held within his brother. He saw horses grazing. Herons slowly rowing through the sky. Deer gathering at the edges of woods as the sun sank below the tops of the trees.

 

Loki sat at the end of the bed and pulled the sheets up to uncover his brother’s feet. What the inert form lacked in beauty--which, in Thor’s case, was not as much as it was for many-- it made up for when in motion. All the toes moved together like oars, rearing up or curling under, their echoed shapes reinforcing each other. And the shy inward curve that the ankle allowed, sweeping the foot down onto its outside edge, was one of the most graceful gestures in all of anatomy. Loki bent to kiss the knobs of Thor’s ankles and the arches of his feet.

“It’s sundown,” he said, when Thor made a soft, questioning sound. 

 

They went out the door at the far end of Loki’s library and knelt in the tall grass, carefully pushing it over with the edges of their forearms, flattening it into a mattress for themselves. They stretched out on their backs and watched the sky go from red to violet to blue while galaxies and nebulae steadily brightened.

“Satisfied?” Loki asked, squeezing Thor’s hand.

“Never,” Thor smiled.

Loki saw the stars reflected in Thor’s eyes when he leaned over to kiss his brother. They could hope for no better mirror. He suspected they knew it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost.


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